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This week’s Story Time, with apologies to Lewis Carroll, is “Brillig.”

I’ve always loved the poem “Jabberwocky,” partly because it never made a lot of sense, mostly for the wordplay. Reciting it aloud, which at one time I could do, always struck me as asking for trouble, however. Why? Darned if I know. But I thought it worth thinking about, which is one way a story will manifest–just thinking about something and writing it down. About the same time, Sean Wallace at Prime Books (later publisher of the Yamada series) was putting together a short run of weird fiction chapbooks called, wait for it, Jabberwocky. This one appeared in Jabberwocky #2.

I’m not sure if this is a blog post or an inventory report. Recently I’d been thinking of planning a new collection. Not that I’m ready just yet; my recent forced hiatus has put me a little behind where I’d like to be, production-wise. Yet when I started looking over my oeuvre, so to speak, I realized, for a great many of my stories, I didn’t necessarily remember if it had been collected or not. I usually did, but not always, and even then not always where. It occurred to me that this is the sort of thing I should know, that it was kind of and certainly at least potentially important. Even my own Bibliography was incomplete. Clearly I needed a better system than my faulty memory.

So, on a morning when I really should have been working on the trim in the mudroom, I was instead feeding story data into an Excel file. Every story collection I’ve done, whether print or ebook only, what stories are in each, and the publication year. All by way of making sure that, when I look at an individual story, if I need to I can quickly look up if, when, and where it’s already appeared. For instance, I’m already thinking of what story to put up for the next Storytime, but one I was considering as an original turned out to have appeared in one of the collections. It had completely slipped my mind. That’s the kind of thing that could lead to severe embarrassment, if not worse.

There are already some duplications, though they’re of the sort to be expected. Aside from their first magazine appearances, some of the Yamada Monogatari and Eli Motherbaugh stories had appeared in earlier general collections before being gathered into their respective character’s collections. I know to some of you out there this falls under the category of “High Class Worries,” but when you’ve published over a hundred stories, that’s a lot to keep track of even without considering reprints, and keeping track of everything is part of the job and I’d been neglecting it. This should get me back on track, but while I’m pulling this data together I may as well share some of it. Listed below are all my collections to date, together with the year, including major collections, special collections, and chapbooks.

The four done under Prime Books imprint I consider my “major” collections, as in larger and more complete. Those listed under Canemill Publishing are the ones I take upon doing myself, for whatever reason. For instance, “Deal with the Devil” stories are pretty old-fashioned and there aren’t many markets for them. However, they’re fun to do and every now and then I wrote one anyway. So I put them together in The Devil Has His Due just to give them a home. Because I could. Two for Christmas, likewise for Christmas stories, though those are the only two I’ve ever done.

For this week’s Storytime I plan to have an original. Now with my story list up to date, I can be reasonably certain that it really is one.

Surprise package in the mail last week, from my publisher’s agent—physical copies of the The Emperor in Shadow audiobook. Just the thing for those long drives in vehicles that still have those, what were they called? Oh, right. CD players. I’m sure there are a few around…other than mine.

I wonder if I should preface this next section with SPOILER ALERT, or some such, but for those who don’t know, The Emperor in Shadow is the concluding volume in the Yamada Monogatari series. I’m not going to say that I’ll never write another Yamada story, because I don’t know that (he also has another sister we still haven’t met), but the main story arc is completed, since the series always had an endpoint and my only uncertainty was if I’d get it there in a reasonable time frame. The answer turned out to be yes. The publisher plans an omnibus volume which will gather all the Yamada stories, plus three stories not yet collected, plus the three novels. That is likely not to be out until 2018. After that, well I plan to be doing something else. I hope some of you are willing to stick around for that. More details when there are any to share.

Normally I like to get these blog posts out earlier in the day, but we had a nice, crisp late-summer morning here (what a concept!) and decided to go looking for a nature trail we’d heard about. We had a beautiful drive in the area around Mt. Shumaker, but a bridge under repair blocked us from reaching the nature trail. We’ll likely be back as summer turns to fall. The view from the mountain would be spectacular.

Okay, back to business, at least for a bit. A reader had already told me that the Audible.com edition of Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow was available for pre-order and this morning I got the official link. I was fortunate in that the audio book reader is once again the incredible Brian Nishii:

“Brian Nishii is a bicultural, bilingual performer from Tokyo. As an actor and dancer, he has worked with theatre companies such as La Mama’s Great Jones Company, Robert Wilson, In Mixed Company, Fluid Motion, Crossing Jamaica Avenue, and The South Wing. Film and television credits include Robot Stories, Sex and the City, and Law & Order (CI). He also provides lead vocals and antics for the colorful band, HappyFunSmile. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and baby boy.”

While it is not quite yet the official release date where you’ll be able to find the book in your local B&N, Amazon.com does have paper copies for sale, so if you know you want it (And why wouldn’t you?) it’s there now. I also want to mention that I have paper copies of my own and since I’m unlikely to be anywhere you are, if you want a signed copy you can get it directly from me. My contact email is on the “About” page. While Supplies Last. Continue reading →

We interrupt whatever this normally is for a strictly commercial announcement: Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow is now live on Kindle, Apple/iTunes, and Nook. It’s a little unusual for the ebook edition to be available before the print edition goes live, but this time those preferring their reading on the screen will get a headstart. Enjoy!